Grep multiple files into one file by line

[Timmay]

I'm trying to figure out how take multiple files, extract things line by line, and put them into another file next to each other. I'll explain further, as this confuses me, and I'm the one trying to do it.

I have 5 files. To make it easier to understand the files are as follows:

1 - First name
2 - Last name
3 - Address
4 - Phone #
5 - Country

The files are matched up so that all of the files line 1 is the same person. As is the same for all other lines. I'm trying to figure out how to take the first line of each of the files and have a long line in the new file with all the info. And then do the same for all the other lines. So each line will have the person's name, phone # etc.

How do I go about doing this, or where can I start looking? I'm rather new to linux, and would appreciate any pointers in the right direction.

Thanks,

Timmay

[gerard4143]

I think your going to have to look at something with a bit more functionality than Grep to get this done. I would consider Perl...Gerard4143

[ghostdog74]

@OP , so what's the output look like? i don't understand what you are describing.

[Cabhan]

So I believe I understand. You have files that look like:

1:

Alex
John

2:

Iselin
Smith

3:

1234 Example Road
5678 Some Street

4:

123-456-7890
321-654-0987

5:

Spain
Iceland

And you want output that looks like:

Alex Iselin, 1234 Example Road, 123-456-7890, Spain
John Smith, 5678 Some Street, 321-654-0987, Iceland

Well, the short answer is that grep isn't going to do this. grep takes a pattern and finds lines in a file that look like that pattern. You want to read five files simultaneously, and process them line-by-line.

The longer answer is that this is not particularly difficult. Your basic design is something like:

1) Create a structure or class that can hold all of the information for a single person.

2) Create a list of these structures.

3) Read the first line of each of the five files, and use this information to create a full person.

4) Add this person to the list.

5) Repeat 3 and 4 until you have read every line.

6) Print out each element of the list in whatever format you want.

This will be very difficult to do with Bash scripting (Bash doesn't really have structures or arrays), but it is very easy with any other sort of scripting language (Perl, Ruby, Python), or pretty much any language.

Does this help at all?

[bojank]

your script should be something like this:

read -p "Enter last name: " LNAME

# get line number where last name is stored in file l_name
LN=$(nl -w1 l_name | grep -m 1 -i $LNAME | cut -f 1)

for i in f_name l_name address tel country; do
	OUT=$(nl -w1 $i | grep ^$LN | cut -f 2)
	echo -n "$OUT "
done
# new line
echo

also you should add some test

[ghostdog74]

(Bash doesn't really have structures or arrays),

minor correction, bash now have arrays..